But it didn’t just stop there. After Cockney Lad had galloped over me, too quickly for Charlie to react despite his best efforts, Charlie had apparently been in such a state of shock that he was going to pull up halfway up the run-in and go back to see if I was alive. Instead, he rode on, ashen-faced, drenched in a cold sweat, not daring to look over his shoulder. You see, what happened couldn’t have been prevented, but it was emotional. Charlie Swan was much more than just a colleague, Charlie had been my childhood friend – we would go pony racing together as ten-year-olds, two Irish kids with long blond locks, ready to conquer Rome. After my accident, this nine-time Irish champion jockey told Eamon that if I didn’t live, he would never ride again.
The irony of it all boggled the mind.
Of course it also boggled the mind that I was thinking about it lying in a hospital bed that I couldn’t physically get out of even if I tried, because my legs didn’t work. Well, at least Charlie would ride again. The silver lining. What would we do without the silver lining?
Often as I sat alone in my room, I pondered all the ‘what if?’ scenarios. I did this to keep my mind busy, to pass the time. There were so many of them, it became a little game. I would recount them in my head, over and over again.
What if my mind hadn’t been clouded by Senna’s death?
What if I hadn’t been riding the one horse that had tried to kill me the last time I’d ridden him?
What if I hadn’t already been knocked unconscious before hitting the ground?
What if I’d fallen close enough to Arcot for Cockney Lad to clear us both in a single stride?
What if I’d fallen far enough from Arcot for Cockney Lad to clear us both in two separate strides?
Would the outcome have changed if any one of these had played out differently? Of course, I would never know, but I wondered all the same.
Sometimes, I thought about the theatrics of it all. I was a child in my head and I felt a childlike thrill at how melodramatic it had been – the police escort, the sirens, the jockey who’d fallen off a horse. I’ve always loved drama like this – you see it in the movies and things, and here I had been living it. It seemed such a pity I was asleep through it all.
Other times, it made me philosophical. Lots of people told me that if my circumstances hadn’t been as high-profile as they were, there wouldn’t have been a police escort, Professor John Miles most likely wouldn’t have been called in on his day off, things wouldn’t have been done with the urgency and the efficiency that they had been. Did my perceived fame then save my life? Should I be thankful for it? Should I feel guilty about it? If I was an anonymous man, if I wasn’t Declan Murphy, would they have let me die? Why was my life any more or any less precious than that of the man next to me? How does one measure the value of a life?
I thought about this, about moral absolutes in a relative world. Freedom and justice and life. It was odd to think about these things that seemed so grown-up and yet I thought about them – I couldn’t help myself. I was a child with adult thoughts. I found myself fighting this paradox constantly.
One day, Joanna brought me my obituary to read. It was a genuine, highly eloquent, fully completed obituary of me, Declan Joseph Murphy, for the Racing Post, penned by talented journalist and my good friend Paul Haigh. It had been written and edited, ready to circulate, stopped only in the nick of time; a comprehensive and emotional fact file of my life (and death), career highlights, notable wins, and most interestingly, how I would be remembered, as a jockey, as a person, as a friend … I read it lying on my hospital bed, over a cup of heavily diluted tea and half a mushed-up stem ginger biscuit, and I was so astonished by it all, I nearly toppled off the bed, wires and everything. It was amazing the things people said about me.
I mean, you may not realize this, but you’re fucking amazing when you die.
But, here I was – not quite alive and kicking, but alive nonetheless. And I didn’t really know what to do with myself. On some days it seemed an endless journey home.
Slowly the years came back, the consciousness, the memories – as if they were being drip-fed through one of the many tubes hanging from my body. But ultimately, once everything that was due to be returned had been returned, I had to accept that some of what was mine had been snatched from me.
When I had woken up from my accident, almost two-thirds of my life were missing. Within days, I got back all but seven years. More gradually after that, I got back another three.
Everything came back chronologically but disordered. At this point, I could recall distinct snippets of my life, of my past, but I also knew how wrong they were, how so much of it just couldn’t be. They were jumbled together in my head, memories, images, from different times, different places; some possible, others improbable, all mixed up into a riddle I still couldn’t solve.
I clearly remembered riding Strawberry, our family’s workhorse. I had just ridden him to deliver milk to the creamery. I had left him there outside, and when I came back, he had disappeared. Was this real? I couldn’t be sure. I was five. Then I found him again on the Curragh when I was riding gallops on a different horse. He was just standing there, alone on the flat, open plain, watching me ride past. Was this real? It couldn’t have been. I was eighteen. And then I was with Joanna. We were at Browns in Cambridge. I was all dressed up in an ironed shirt. There was a piano player. Joanna was laughing. We seemed so happy. Was this real? This seemed more probable. I was twenty-three. And then, my last memory of all – the Sunday of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October 1989, in the garden of Joanna’s grandparents, Peter and Pauline Chase. It was the first time I had picked up a golf club in my life and Peter Chase was teaching me how to swing it. Was this real? It seemed so vivid. I was not quite twenty-four. Then it all went blank. And I could remember no more.
So I waited. I waited for what was rightfully mine. The missing four years. My missing four years. My precious, precious four years. The four years leading up to the accident. The four years that defined my racing career. The four years that culminated in everything I had worked towards. The four years in which I had found success, fame, love.
So I waited. And I waited. And I am waiting still.
For they never came back.
I regained only part of my memory; the most recent four years of my life were gone for ever.
And interlaced with this, so tight it could not be wrenched apart, was my sense of identity.
There is a time that comes when science confounds itself.
Life goes backwards, memories disappear.
And darkness moves faster than light.
This was that time.
This was my umbra – the darkest part of a shadow, the darkest part of a life, a total eclipse.
The umbra of the Earth is 1.4 million kilometres long.
Mine was humbling in comparison.
But it was equally dark.
Because no matter how strong I was, how hard I tried, how much in control I felt, there was something I simply could not do – I could not remember a part of myself.
Hubris
How does a man look to the future when he cannot remember his past?
I had lost four years of my life.
Try as I did not to let this affect me, not to consciously think about it, there it was like a relentless rerun of a horror film.
Inside my head.
Turned up to full volume.
Dominating my existence.
I couldn’t switch it off.
I had lost four years of my life.
And now? What lay ahead and did I dare to find out?
I was one of the lucky ones – I didn’t die; I lived. I lived through my accident, but this – living the consequences of my accident – seemed a challenge more crippling than death itself, because I couldn’t understand who I was before it, and who I was supposed to be now. And this utter lack of comprehension over my own identity created mayhem inside my head. Both that and unfathomable pain.
; The physical pain, I could accept. In fact, when I felt it – when the drugs allowed me to feel it – I welcomed it. Pain meant sensation and sensation meant hope. But the emotional pain was exhausting in its confusion.
Ten days after brain surgery, I made a decision of unimaginable boldness, foolhardiness and unprecedented risk. I decided I didn’t want to stay in the hospital, I didn’t want the care, I didn’t want the medication. All of it – the environment, the carers, the drugs – was making me feel unwell.
There was no reason for this that can be explained away by logic. It was instinct, pure and primal. And I trusted in my instinct implicitly. Intuition had always been the wisest force in my life, the inner voice that spoke without words. And when it spoke, I listened. Sometimes it whispered, sometimes it screamed. But I always listened.
Now, my instinct was a roaring dragon.
Pacing. Raging. Breathing fire.
A caged animal.
Suffocating in a prison of incapacity.
No, I had to leave.
Intuition is not meant to be institutionalized.
When Professor Miles was updating me on my condition, I never accepted that there was anything wrong with me, because something inside told me that I was going to put it right. I was a sportsman; my cells were programmed to think like this – to never accept adversity, to never weaken when I needed to strengthen. In my head, I saw it all as a temporary state and I saw within myself the power to conquer it. I knew that I may not be able to conquer it right now, I may not be able to conquer it today, I may not be able to conquer it tomorrow, but I honestly, truly believed that I would conquer it. I believed this. I believed it in my head. And my head had never let me down.
Throughout my career as a jockey, I had been set apart from my colleagues, not only for my riding skill, but also, notably, for my intelligence. And I had worked the two in unison. Using a combination of gut feeling and judgement, I had developed a strategic, perfectly instinctive approach to race-riding. Before I even got on a horse, I had a game plan, measured and calculated. I would analyse everything, pre-race and post-race, strive to correct past mistakes, strive to surpass past expectations. And then, when I got on the horse, just while cantering to the start, I would consider my options, judge my pace, determine my tactics – I wasn’t riding for show; I was riding to win. And so every stride was thought through with careful deliberation, split-second decisions were taken with split-second precision. I didn’t just go out and ride. I used my brain.
Now, in the harshly revealing fluorescent glow of hospital light, I found it terrifying that I might not just lose my riding skill but I stood in danger of losing my brain. The grand irony of it all was that the horse’s hoof had not struck my neck or my shoulder or my arm or my leg – it had struck my brain. Wherein lay the intelligence that defined me. This frightened me far more than losing the ability to ride. This threatened the very essence of my being. I looked down at my hands – I had lost total sensation in them – and I realized that this could take everything away from me.
We die. We all die. But after you stare into the heart of death and come out, somehow, on the other side, you understand what it means to live.
So I held my head, the one that had been galloped upon, in my hands, the ones without sensation. And if I felt despair, I didn’t show it. Because I knew no matter how damaged it was, my head would never let me down.
It didn’t matter what the doctors said. It didn’t matter what the experts believed. My intuition was always right. The eclipse would fade. The umbra would lift. I would recover.
Pardon my hubris.
Strength in Numbers
Documented Falls in the British National Hunt Season, 1993/94
My record: 10 falls in 385 rides
Or: 1 fall every 38.5 rides
Jump jockeys average record: 1 fall every 9 rides
Stated another way: To suffer 10 falls, the average jockey would ride only 90 races versus my 385 races.
Stated another way: In close to 400 rides, I fell less than the average jockey would fall in 100 rides.
Stated another way: In the 385 rides that I fell 10 times, the average jockey would have fallen 43 times.
My odds of falling: < 3%
My odds of living: < 50%
Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Joanna
There is no book without love. Because there is no story without love. My story had love, and her name was Joanna.
I first set eyes on Joanna Park in the summer of 1989. It was towards the end of August and I had just come back from California, having spent six months with Charlie Whittingham, while also doing classes at UCLA. I was still undecided about my future, with racing on one side and a law degree on the other, and me in the middle, stuck at a crossroads. And then I met a girl.
My first encounter with Joanna was, quite aptly, on horseback. Barney Curley’s stables in Newmarket were down the road from Charlie King’s livery yard, and often when riding out for Barney, we would spot Charlie’s string, riding across the village of Exning.
This is how Joanna and I first met – with our eyes. So stunned was I by the vision in front of me that I couldn’t even bring myself to say hello. Instead, I sat stupidly on my horse, while she rode past me on the other side and disappeared just as suddenly as she had appeared.
But what’s for you, will not pass you by. I believe this.
And meeting Joanna was for me.
A few days later, I saw her again. Porky (Michael O’Rourke) and I were outside by the entrance to the stables and I saw Joanna drive past in a car. ‘Quick,’ I said to Porky, ‘that’s her.’ So we got in the car to follow a girl. I’m fast on horseback. I’m faster in a car. But I would quickly learn that Joanna was more than a match for me. To my frustration, I lost her again.
So I went next door to the livery yard and asked Charlie King who she was. He said, ‘Oh, she’s just a schoolgirl. She lives there in that big house across the road.’ And before I could think very much about what I was doing, I went and knocked on the door of ‘that big house across the road’. And there I met her father, a man who was to become a friend and an ally from that day on. Joanna, he told me, lives with her mother, and her mother lived on the other side of Cambridge. But he said he would give her the message. ‘This strange Irish boy in a great big car came looking for you,’ Robert Park would later tell his daughter Joanna.
And so it all began.
A while later, Robert Park invited me to his house to meet Joanna. I fell in love with her right away. She was beautiful, she was kind; there was a softness to her that touched me deeply. And right here, in the middle of my love story, something unexpected happened. Something I look back on with a warmth that fills my heart, something that makes me proud to be me. And it is this: I presented myself to Robert Park – reeking of aftershave and dripping with confidence – with the sole purpose of trying to find Joanna. But in doing that, I gained in him a friend for life.
It was the same with Joanna’s grandfather. I first met Joanna’s grandparents, Peter and Pauline Chase, on Arc Day 1989 at their house in Woodbridge. It was on the Sunday of the Arc, the first Sunday in October and a memorable day in racing history – Carroll House, trained by Michael Jarvis and ridden by Mick Kinane, had won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe over 2,400 metres at Longchamp.
I connected with Peter Chase straight away. There were fifty years between us but they were of no relevance to me; we could sit together and talk for hours. I couldn’t get enough of him – his wisdom, his humour, his intelligence. He used to write short stories, and he enjoyed reading them aloud to me – he had the most perfect command of the English language, this wonderful ability to craft beautiful-sounding phrases, and I could have sat with him all day long just listening to him read. I was so moved by the way he spoke – the emotion in his words, the meaning behind them, his diction, his voice. I still remember his voice, the quality of his voice. When I close my eyes, I still hear it.
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nbsp; The warmth with which I was received by Peter Chase until he died, the warmth with which I am received by Robert Park, even to this day, tells me that somewhere, in some way, I had to have been a good person. And this means everything to me.
Meanwhile, the lay of the land was such that Joanna’s father had become a great friend, Joanna’s grandfather had become my best friend; Joanna, however, was still not my girlfriend. Sadly for me, she didn’t fall for my charms immediately. But happily for me, her father did. And that certainly helped. Of course with that kind of momentum on my side – for Robert Park is as enthusiastic, persuasive and charismatic a man as you will find – it was inevitable that she would succumb eventually. And after a month of asking her out every day, eventually, she did.
Meeting Joanna simplified the decisions in my life. I was twenty-three, Joanna was eighteen and on her way to the London College of Business, while at the same time starting to establish herself as a professional model. I decided I didn’t want to go back to California. I was ready to give it all up; after all, I had met a girl. Instead, I decided to follow her to pursue my education. At exactly this time, I began to capture the attention of Josh Gifford; not long thereafter, I was offered the much-coveted job as his stable jockey. And once again, I found myself at an all too familiar place – the crossroads. My education on the one hand; one of the best jobs in the country on the other. I took the job with Josh Gifford.
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